Roger Tonge

Who was Roger Tonge?

Roger Tonge was a British actor.

He was born Anthony Roger Tonge in Birmingham where he attended Lordswood Technical Grammar School. He was working as an £8-a-week post office clerk and performing in amateur dramatics in the evenings when he landed the role of Sandy Richardson, the motel owner's son in the ATV soap opera, Crossroads, a role he would play for 17 years. He played the disabled son of Meg Richardson, played by the actress Noele Gordon, in the much-maligned soap opera. The character had come down with a temporary illness as part of the ongoing plot and a full recovery was planned until someone wrote in and pointed out that people do not make full recoveries from that illness, which necessitated the star to use a wheelchair for the rest of his time on the show.

But it was the actor's fight against an incurable cancer that resulted in his departure from the programme before the programme was cancelled. During Tonge's tenure in the series, his character became a wheelchair user after a car crash, and in a case of life imitating art, Tonge became one too through his illness.